4 ms·

Being thorough and accurate might make you a lot of money in the stock market, but it's not a good way to get any media presence, because that demands being in

Being thorough and accurate might make you a lot of money in the stock market, but it's not a good way to get any media presence, because that demands being in front of people quite often, and basically nobody can be insightful and well researched in all topics of the day. Once you become a pundit, whether on politics or tech, and rely on eyeballs to feed you, you are going to be throwing stinkers. And at that point, you might as well just align with an audience and not care too much about whether you are predicting anything accurately. We have people telling us the next recession being imminent all the time. Others told us that NFTs were key to the future of art. That's the pundit way. If you want accuracy, you become like Charlie Munger, have maybe 2, 3 really good insights througout your career, and hope do to well using the insights yourself, not by being a pundit

hypfer 1mo ago
> We have people telling us the next recession being imminent all the time. Yeah uhm so I'm not sure if you've like seen the world recently, but uh. Yea
- gryfft 1mo ago
  I believe the saying goes: Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
  - hajile 1mo ago
    The markets may not be claiming a recession, but the real world certainly is.
    - jongjong 1mo ago
      I feel like I've been in a recession economy since the day I entered the workforce 14 years ago. The movement of the stock market has had no effect on my reality. It's like two different universes inhabited by two different sets of people. IMO, all the narratives we were exposed to around privilege before and after COVID were a cover up of this fact that we have a two-class system which is explicitly creating this condition. The issue is at the system design level and goes far beyond "technology putting people out of a job". The privilege narrative was classic communist-style "accuse your enemy of what you're doing yourself." It was literally the privileged few preemptively accusing the unprivileged masses of being unfairly privileged in order to take control that narrative before it was used on them.
- thegrim33 1mo ago
  S&P 500 - All time high DJIA - All time high Unemployment rate - Near all time low (for last 20 years) Number of US small businesses - All time high US GDP - All time high [Sources] https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-unemployment-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une... https://www.sellerscommerce.com/blog/small-business-statistics/ https://www.sellerscommerce.com/blog/small-business-statisti... https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP
  - sfblah 1mo ago
    How well I remember people pointing to the scoreboard in early 2008...
    - BeetleB 1mo ago
      How well I remember someone predicting 7 of the last 2 recessions... Yes, one day, we'll have a recession. It doesn't mean the doom prophets were correct.
      - sfblah 1mo ago
        Agreed, but look at it the other way. Do you really think we'll never again have a recession? Some people genuinely believe that.
        JumpCrisscross 1mo ago
        > Some people genuinely believe that Sure. They’re in the same category of wrongness as Zitron. If someone said they follow the newsletter of a guy who claims we’ll never have a recession again, I’d quietly note that.
  - hypfer 1mo ago
    I mean I wish you a lot of fun playing this discussion game online, but I kinda fail to see the point of it. Someone could now of course say "hey, but are your sure that these are really the metrics we should be looking at?", which could then be countered with a "well of course! This is how one measures a recession, no?" And that could go on forever, achieving absolutely nothing.
- Helloworldboy 1mo ago
  [dead]
arctic-true 1mo ago
This is exactly right. Now, that does mean something about Zitron: he’s a pundit, not an expert or a forecasting genius. You could point to any number of analogous booster types. Twitter/X somehow loves pushing these people onto my recommended feed. I remember reading breathless threads about how o3 was going to single-handedly end white collar work. There are just more of that sort of person, so none of them in particular gets the same amount of attention as Zitron, who seems to be the only person willing to go on the record against AI. Maybe his overall worldview is sound, and maybe it isn’t. But he’s not really making confident, specific predictions about the future. Which leads me to a criticism of the piece: several assertions are described as “Wrong,” with no explanation or citation, which are not obviously wrong to my mind. For example, the assertion that “DeepSeek has commoditized the [LLM]” is at least debatable. It is a prospect that the major labs seem to have at least considered.
- sfblah 1mo ago
  In my experience, people who make fun of AI's ability to eliminate white-collar work are exactly the same people who are white-knuckling it, hoping they can make another $300k next year to buy that Rivian. People who don't need a salary look at the situation more objectively and, in general, can see that a lot of white-collar work is in peril.
  - arctic-true 1mo ago
    I think that is tied to the general trend that people see themselves as far less replaceable than others. And I’m not sure that people who don’t need a salary are exactly objective about it - unless you mean people who live off the state or something, those are people who need their capital reserves to continue to appreciate in order to sustain their lifestyles, and are thus relying on the destruction of white collar work to justify the valuations of the technology companies which are underpinning the strength of the markets. It’s like saying in the 19th century that only the propertied classes should be allowed to make decisions about labor policy, because the laborers themselves have their judgment clouded by their position. But I take your point, and I only brought up the o3 example to emphasize that people on both sides of the booster/doubter debate can be prisoners of the moment. There are boosters eternally convinced that the utopia (or armageddon, for the doomer-inclined) is either already here or imminent, and there are doubters eternally convinced that we have reached the peak. One of them will eventually be right, but neither has been yet. You can’t fault one of them for calling their shot if you’re not willing to see it happening on the other side.
tavavex 1mo ago
> We have people telling us the next recession being imminent all the time. Others told us that NFTs were key to the future of art. That's quite the conflation, and a very subtle way to tie a claim that's still unresolved to one that is to try and make the first one seem wrong with no evidence. Recessions are almost guaranteed in our system, they're a part of a cycle. Unless you think that the Great Recession was the last one in history, saying the next one is 'imminent' would be correct for any other viewpoint. We just don't know when it'll officially start.
wmf 1mo ago
...get any media presence, because that demands being in front of people quite often, and basically nobody can be insightful and well researched in all topics of the day What? Zitron is getting a lot of media attention by repeating the same takes hundreds of times. He's not a general pundit.
- JumpCrisscross 1mo ago
  > Zitron is getting a lot of media attention by repeating the same takes hundreds of times They’re not the same take. Predicting collapse thirty days from now for three years running isn’t the same take, it’s a series of wrong takes.
lurk2 1mo ago
> Once you become a pundit, whether on politics or tech, and rely on eyeballs to feed you, you are going to be throwing stinkers. Peter Zeihan

hypfer 1mo ago

> We have people telling us the next recession being imminent all the time. Yeah uhm so I'm not sure if you've like seen the world recently, but uh. Yea

gryfft 1mo ago
I believe the saying goes: Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
- hajile 1mo ago
  The markets may not be claiming a recession, but the real world certainly is.
  - jongjong 1mo ago
    I feel like I've been in a recession economy since the day I entered the workforce 14 years ago. The movement of the stock market has had no effect on my reality. It's like two different universes inhabited by two different sets of people. IMO, all the narratives we were exposed to around privilege before and after COVID were a cover up of this fact that we have a two-class system which is explicitly creating this condition. The issue is at the system design level and goes far beyond "technology putting people out of a job". The privilege narrative was classic communist-style "accuse your enemy of what you're doing yourself." It was literally the privileged few preemptively accusing the unprivileged masses of being unfairly privileged in order to take control that narrative before it was used on them.
thegrim33 1mo ago
S&P 500 - All time high DJIA - All time high Unemployment rate - Near all time low (for last 20 years) Number of US small businesses - All time high US GDP - All time high [Sources] https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-unemployment-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une... https://www.sellerscommerce.com/blog/small-business-statistics/ https://www.sellerscommerce.com/blog/small-business-statisti... https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP
- sfblah 1mo ago
  How well I remember people pointing to the scoreboard in early 2008...
  - BeetleB 1mo ago
    How well I remember someone predicting 7 of the last 2 recessions... Yes, one day, we'll have a recession. It doesn't mean the doom prophets were correct.
    - sfblah 1mo ago
      Agreed, but look at it the other way. Do you really think we'll never again have a recession? Some people genuinely believe that.
      - JumpCrisscross 1mo ago
        > Some people genuinely believe that Sure. They’re in the same category of wrongness as Zitron. If someone said they follow the newsletter of a guy who claims we’ll never have a recession again, I’d quietly note that.
- hypfer 1mo ago
  I mean I wish you a lot of fun playing this discussion game online, but I kinda fail to see the point of it. Someone could now of course say "hey, but are your sure that these are really the metrics we should be looking at?", which could then be countered with a "well of course! This is how one measures a recession, no?" And that could go on forever, achieving absolutely nothing.
Helloworldboy 1mo ago
[dead]

arctic-true 1mo ago

This is exactly right. Now, that does mean something about Zitron: he’s a pundit, not an expert or a forecasting genius. You could point to any number of analogous booster types. Twitter/X somehow loves pushing these people onto my recommended feed. I remember reading breathless threads about how o3 was going to single-handedly end white collar work. There are just more of that sort of person, so none of them in particular gets the same amount of attention as Zitron, who seems to be the only person willing to go on the record against AI. Maybe his overall worldview is sound, and maybe it isn’t. But he’s not really making confident, specific predictions about the future. Which leads me to a criticism of the piece: several assertions are described as “Wrong,” with no explanation or citation, which are not obviously wrong to my mind. For example, the assertion that “DeepSeek has commoditized the [LLM]” is at least debatable. It is a prospect that the major labs seem to have at least considered.

sfblah 1mo ago
In my experience, people who make fun of AI's ability to eliminate white-collar work are exactly the same people who are white-knuckling it, hoping they can make another $300k next year to buy that Rivian. People who don't need a salary look at the situation more objectively and, in general, can see that a lot of white-collar work is in peril.
- arctic-true 1mo ago
  I think that is tied to the general trend that people see themselves as far less replaceable than others. And I’m not sure that people who don’t need a salary are exactly objective about it - unless you mean people who live off the state or something, those are people who need their capital reserves to continue to appreciate in order to sustain their lifestyles, and are thus relying on the destruction of white collar work to justify the valuations of the technology companies which are underpinning the strength of the markets. It’s like saying in the 19th century that only the propertied classes should be allowed to make decisions about labor policy, because the laborers themselves have their judgment clouded by their position. But I take your point, and I only brought up the o3 example to emphasize that people on both sides of the booster/doubter debate can be prisoners of the moment. There are boosters eternally convinced that the utopia (or armageddon, for the doomer-inclined) is either already here or imminent, and there are doubters eternally convinced that we have reached the peak. One of them will eventually be right, but neither has been yet. You can’t fault one of them for calling their shot if you’re not willing to see it happening on the other side.

tavavex 1mo ago

> We have people telling us the next recession being imminent all the time. Others told us that NFTs were key to the future of art. That's quite the conflation, and a very subtle way to tie a claim that's still unresolved to one that is to try and make the first one seem wrong with no evidence. Recessions are almost guaranteed in our system, they're a part of a cycle. Unless you think that the Great Recession was the last one in history, saying the next one is 'imminent' would be correct for any other viewpoint. We just don't know when it'll officially start.

wmf 1mo ago

...get any media presence, because that demands being in front of people quite often, and basically nobody can be insightful and well researched in all topics of the day What? Zitron is getting a lot of media attention by repeating the same takes hundreds of times. He's not a general pundit.

JumpCrisscross 1mo ago
> Zitron is getting a lot of media attention by repeating the same takes hundreds of times They’re not the same take. Predicting collapse thirty days from now for three years running isn’t the same take, it’s a series of wrong takes.

lurk2 1mo ago

> Once you become a pundit, whether on politics or tech, and rely on eyeballs to feed you, you are going to be throwing stinkers. Peter Zeihan